Healthcare communications and marketing news and information

Google recently responded to a letter sent last month by the European Union questioning how the company stores online search information.  Chief among the EU’s concerns was the fact that Google stores information about users’ search patterns for up to two years.  The EU said that this information can be ultimately linked “to individual users and therefore constitute personal data.”  

Google has long been aware of these concerns.  In a March 2007 post on the official Google blog, two Google lawyers, Nicole Wong and Peter Fleischer said:

“After talking with leading privacy stakeholders in Europe and the US, we’re pleased to be taking this important step toward protecting your privacy.  By anonymizing our server logs after 18-24 months, we think we’re striking the right balance between . . . continuing to improve Google’s services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices.”  

Other search engine companies have also had to respond to critics who assert that their privacy policies are not robust enough.  In fact, in August 2006 AOL voluntarily released data from more than 650,000 Americans to aid a study being conducted by a group of researchers.  The New York Times then used this information to find an individual AOL user who was looking for health-related information about a range of subjects, including bipolar disorder.  
With health-focused search engines growing in popularity some are justifiably concerned about how these companies will be protecting and using data.  One company, Healia, which was just purchased by Meredith Corporation, a leading media and marketing company, deals with these issues on a daily basis.  In August 2006, I interviewed Tom Eng, Healia’s founder who had this to say about the company’s privacy practices:

“Healia does not collect ‘personally identifiable information’ about users unless users provide us that information voluntarily. Visitors do not have to provide any personally identifiable information to use Healia. The specific types of information we collect are clearly stated in our Privacy Policy link on our home page.”

Of course, now that the company was acquired by Meredith Corporation, which plans to integrate Healia’s technology “into Meredith's existing Web sites,” one wonders whether and how the company’s privacy policies will change.  

Overall, we should be concerned about how companies like Google are using the information we provide.  With data theft becoming increasingly common, will we wake up one morning and learn that thieves have stolen health information we thought was private?  

Right now we don’t know if this nightmarish scenario will ever occur.  However, all of us need to be aware of this problem and take steps to protect our collective privacy.  

Please note:  Other Know More Media (KMM) authors will be posting about this topic throughout the week.  For more on this subject, please see this post from Marshall Sponder, author of KMM’s WebMetrics Guru.